Summer at the Bowl: Part 3 of 3

When last I blogged about our concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, we'd just been amazed by the prodigious talent of violinist Joshua Bell, playing with the LA Philharmonic on a Tuesday night.  Just a few days later, on Friday, 9/1, it was back to the Bowl yet again for what was probably my most highly anticipated show we'd be seeing: the one and only John Williams conducting the Phil, playing some of his most renowned musical scores.

Chris was back on his standard work schedule by this time, so he arrived home by 5pm, and we packed up our picnic and headed out the door to the Lakewood Park and Ride stop we'd taken the week earlier to the Gipsy Kings show.  The buses were once again comfy and we sat back to read, this time without intrusion from the riders in the row in front of us (thankfully).

Because you're not really a business

student unless you have a giant pile

of unread Wall Street Journal copies somewhere.

The crowd was absolutely massive for this show, and I give major kudos to anyone who dressed up in a Jedi robe or Harry Potter-style house regalia - it had been unseasonably warm for the past week, and even as showtime approached (8pm), it was still in the 90s and absolutely sweltering.  Given the crowds, and knowing our seats were once again on stage right, we bypassed the main gate, heading for the little-used West gate; it's a much smaller entrance, but the lines are generally quite a bit shorter, and it's just down the hill from where our seats would be.  We breezed through the gate and then commenced hiking up the massive hill; while the hill impacts both sides of the Bowl, the main entrance side has moving walkways and escalators to get you up to your seats - on the West side, you go it on your own:

OMG are we there yet??!?!

The small size of the West gate

plus the giant hill always leads

me to refer to it as the "Moon Gate."

Because there's no such thing as

being too nerdy at the John Williams show.

After eventually making it to our seats, it was high time to chow down and enjoy the picnic we'd brought from home - curry chicken salad pitas (with apples, celery, and currants - it was "use up all of these random things" day at the Olsen house), Fritos with onion dip, and homemade brownies.  

Mmmm...pita!

My main squeeze and I before showtime.

The first half of the show featured David Newman (son of Alfred Newman, both of them famous film score composers and conductors in their own right) leading the Phil through some classic film scores, some featuring video clips: Doctor Zhivago, Wuthering Heights, and even A Star is Born.  The Star piece was particularly great, as it had Judy Garland onscreen, singing "Born in a Trunk" while being accompanied by the Phil; it was at least 10-15 minutes long, and it was glorious.  

After intermission, the man himself came out to thunderous applause, and he immediately launched into some of the greatest hits of his career: pieces of the scores from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (celebrating its 40th anniversary this year), Sabrina, and the like.  Of course, several pieces from the Harry Potter canon were well represented and featured video clips, and it helped to remind me once again of the incredible power of Rowling's books and the pleasure I witnessed seeing them up on the big screen.

In the middle of the second half, the Maestro started talking about becoming friends with Kobe Bryant, the Lakers great, and how recently, Kobe had asked him to score and conduct the musical accompaniment for the animated version of the poem "Dear Basketball" he wrote upon retiring from the game.  As the AV team cued up the animations, Maestro Williams mentioned we'd be treated to a special guest narrator for the poem, and indeed, it was Kobe himself!  The crowd went nuts, and the poem, animation, and score were all fantastic and rather moving.  Of course, I have no pictures of this, and you can clearly see where my interests relative to concerts at the Bowl may lie (I have no beef with Kobe - I just forget to take shots of him.  He looked lovely). 

By far the biggest cheers of the night, however, were reserved for the Star Wars bits and bops (my date up there calls them "beeps and boops").  Several of these were also accompanied by video clips, including "Rey's Theme," which Maestro Williams introduced with a great story.  Apparently, when he received information on Rey and what role she'd play in Episode VII (so he could, you know, write her theme), he immediately fell in love with the character, particularly her strength and resiliency, telling the assembled crowd that she was his "dreamboat."  Is it possible to love a person more?  I mean, honestly?

Anywhoo, as the crowd filed into the Bowl earlier that evening, we'd noticed quite a few lightsabers in attendance, and those wielding them took the golden opportunity to light those suckers up:

A few videos with all of them in action:

As you can probably imagine, the Maestro did a few encores, as the crowd wasn't budging anytime soon.  If I recall correctly, he did four total, including the main theme from E.T. and "The Imperial March" from Star Wars (Vader's theme).  By the end of the show, we were exhausted, and we couldn't imagine how tired he must be, taking into account that he's now 85 years old and had been conducting for around an hour and half in a black turtleneck and long pants in gnarly weather.  Insane.  Give that man a nap.  And a few more Oscars.

We packed up our sweaty stadium seats (we aired those out at home for a few days afterward) and leftover foodstuffs and tried not to roll down the hill as we headed for the Park and Ride bus.  We found it without issue and were happy to chill out in the AC on the way home, even though my seat seemed to be permanently stuck in "recline" mode (it was 11pm by this point, so I used it as a good excuse to fall asleep).  What a great show!  The Maestro actually repeated this entire concert on both Saturday AND Sunday of the weekend, and 20 minutes before the Sunday show started, the heavens opened up, rain drenching the entire crowd.  I think we'll handle the heat instead, thanks!

Thankfully for us and our sleep schedules, our final show at the Bowl wouldn't be for a few more weeks, and it was going to be an epic one.  On Tuesday, 9/12, our final tickets had us heading to Hollywood for the last time this summer to see Yo-Yo Ma perform Bach's Six Suites for Solo Cello.  If your reading comprehension is good, you'll notice that says "solo cello" - that meant it was just Yo-Yo Ma, all by himself, performing for two solid hours with just a quick 10 minute break between suites 3 and 4.  I said "epic" earlier, right?  Indeed.

Okay, back to the beginning of the story, because I'm nothing if not overly comprehensive.  Like our other Tuesday night shows this summer season, Chris and I met at Union Station; he drove from work in Irwindale, and I took the blue line Metro from Long Beach, reading Sarah Gerard's Sunshine State and not encountering too many weirdos along the way (when I got on at Wardlow station, I was the ONLY person in the entire car, which was really strange, until a rather odorous gentlemen moved into my car and sat in the seat directly in front of me - seriously, the whole subway car was empty except for me in my seat - and then asked me for fifty cents).  

As I was getting ready to leave, Kaylee gave me her normal "dance of displeasure" that we would be out for the evening, demonstrating her unhappiness in the best way she knows how: by messing up the rug in the spare bathroom.  She's always been a strong willed but never a bad dog, so when she sees we're ready to head out, she likes to go into the bathroom and kick the rug around, so it gets all messed up and unusable.  It's her small act of rebellion.  Here she is, in the midst of f*cking up the rug:

"That'll show you guys!"

As an aside, the spare bathroom normally

has at least one bathing suit drying out in it.

Since I'd be making the trip from Long Beach on my own as for previous Tuesday shows, we decided to eat out somewhere; we'd exhausted most of the options in the Bowl, and although there are tons of places in Hollywood proper, it's kind of hard to get between them and the Bowl in that particular area of town (large hill, about a mile and a half hike each way, etc).  As an alternative, I started a search for restaurants around Union Station; as we saw when we ate inside Union Station at Traxx a few weeks prior, we could hop on the shuttle around 7pm and make it to the Bowl in plenty of time to catch the show and still buy popcorn before we sat down.  As it turns out, the entrance to Chinatown is just a half mile away from Union Station, and there are TONS of options in the area.

Although we had plenty of places from which to choose, we ended up at Philippe the Original, which claims to be the inventor of the French Dip.  It's been around for over 100 years, and since we're not in this area very often, we figured we had to try it out (it's one of those "it's an institution" kind of places).  We each grabbed a French Dip sandwich (double dipped, for those of you keeping score), a small beer, and a couple of sides, and we thoroughly enjoyed the meal.  It was fast, delicious, and relatively cheap, given the amount of food we received.

Noms!

On the way back, we passed through the pedestrian area of Olvera Street next to Los Angeles Plaza Park, one of the original sites in the city complete with an old adobe home.  Even though we were full, we couldn't resist the siren call of the sweets here, splitting a caramel filled churro at Mr. Churro:

SUGAR!

After sweet snacks, it was back to Union Station to the shuttle bus, and from there, we rode to the Bowl.  As we waited in line for our turn to disembark, I realized I didn't yet have a photo of the famous statue at the entrance of the Bowl, the Muse of Music, Dance, and Drama, created in 1940 by sculptor George Stanley, the same guy who created the iconic Oscar statuette:

There she is!

We walked in through the normal gates this time (the crowd was big, but it wasn't John Williams level huge) and grabbed some caramel popcorn (more dessert!) and a few beers.  We settled down in our seats to kill the time before Yo-Yo Ma took the stage.

This is where Yo-Yo Ma will go.

Eventually, our featured artist (our only artist tonight) took the stage to uproarious applause, which was well deserved.  He played through the first three concertos with only short breaks in between each for applause, and after the third, he left the stage for a very quick ten minute break, during which the entire Bowl bolted for the restrooms.  Truly, the performance was magnetic, and one of the best parts is that you could easily tell how much Yo-Yo Ma was enjoying playing this amazing music for all of us.  He closed his eyes while playing (no sheet music, by the way - six full concertos, fully memorized - hot damn!) and swayed back and forth in the chair, smiling broadly during his favorite parts.

Taking a well deserved bow.

The concert was stunning, and he even had enough left in him to perform a piece by Pablo Casals as an encore.  After the show, we gathered our things and headed back down the hill to our waiting shuttle bus, where we caught a ride to Union Station and then back home in the car.  Overall, we had a great summer season at the Bowl, and we'll try our best to be back next year!

Later!

Amy